Background to the project The aim of this paper is to start a conversation about how we can answer the question: What is a rights-based alternative to the current model of third country processing in Nauru and Papua New Guinea?

The Commission has endeavoured to identify options for responding to flight by sea which are consistent with Australia’s international human rights obligations.

This Quick Guide contains official statistics released by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) from the resumption of offshore processing in 2012 until May 2016 (where available). The statistics contained herein include:

The year 2015 was a dramatic and traumatic period for refugees, in Australia and internationally. The number of people forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations is now at the highest level since World War II.1 The enormous challenges of global displacement have come to be symbolised by dramatic images of Syrian children washing up dead on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, Germans lining up to help refugees at train stations and Hungary’s barbed wire fence along its border.

While the Federal Budget’s fourth successive cut to Australian aid is disappointing, in its aid Budget Analysis 2016-17 published today the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) has welcomed the Government increasing the program’s overall transparency.

SYDNEY, June 21, 2014 (AFP) - Australia is offering asylum-seekers in its Pacific immigration camps up to $10,000 (US$9,400) if they voluntarily return to their home country, a report said Saturday, prompting outrage from refugee campaigners.

Fairfax Media reported that those returning to Lebanon from detention centres on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and the tiny Pacific state of Nauru were offered the highest amount of $10,000.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 16 (UNHCR) – Fourteen-year-old Mustafa* is a self-starter. He's had to be to survive the brickbats that have flown his way, including the murder of his parents in Afghanistan and beatings from an abusive brother-in-law.